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'The Wolverine' hits theaters on Friday.

With August just around the corner, audiences may finally be getting tired of the giant movies that have been jockeying for space at the multiplex. Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Star Trek: Into Darkness and World War Z have battered our senses and left us feeling hung over. We need a break.

Maybe that's why The Wolverine is only projected to earn $67 million at the box office this weekend, according to Exhibitor Relations. That might sound like a good chunk of money but let's put it in perspective. It would be a better opening than 2011's X-Men: First Class, which debuted with $55 million, but a worse opening than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which brought in $85 million opening weekend. That movie, which earned $373 million on a budget of $150 million, is generally considered to be a flop. (First Class earned less - $353 million.)

Also consider the fact that The Wolverine is the only big movie opening this weekend. It's biggest box office threats are a low-budget horror movie (The Conjuring) and a kids movie that's been in theaters since July 3rd (Despicable Me 2).

For some reason, the X-Men movies have never done as well as one might expect at the box office. In the U.S. the franchise has been out-earned by the Fast & Furious series, Star Trek and Transformers. None of the X-Men films have grossed more than $460 million at the box office.

But that hasn't stopped from continuing to try and capitalize on the Marvel superheroes. Another X-Men movie, Days of Future Past is slated to hit theaters on the early side of next summer. The new movie, which made a big splash at Comic-Con, will mix the original cast with the newer cast who play younger versions of the X-Men. That means the new film will costar Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and Jennifer Lawrence.

The domestic box office for The Wolverine might not be the main money target for Fox on the latest movie. Set in Japan, the film might be the X-Men film that finally does considerably better overseas than in America. X-Men: First Class had the biggest international box office ratio with 59% of the film's total $354 million coming from overseas. But in today's blockbuster world, a successful films needs to be bringing in much more from outside the U.S.

If The Wolverine underperforms, like The Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim before it, maybe studios will start to rethink the strategy of dumping almost every big superhero movie into the summer movie window. Yes, kids are out of school and everyone is anxious to get into the air conditioning. But viewers might be much more excited about The Wolverine in the movie doldrums of February or October.

I realize that when studios do release movies during those slower periods, the assumption is always that they have no faith in the movie so it's being dumped in a weak month. But last year The Hunger Games proved that if a movie is good enough, it doesn't matter when it hits theaters. That film was released in the typically slow month of March and went on to gross $692 million.